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Last modified: Wednesday, February 21, 2007

Informatics grad students’ chemical research garners national attention

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
February 21, 2007

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- Two Indiana University School of Informatics doctoral students -- whose research could advance significant pharmaceutical discoveries in areas such as cancer therapy -- are being recognized for their work by the American Chemical Society.

Huijun Wang and Xiao Dong are the recipients of ACS's Division of Chemical Information (CINF)-MDL Elsevier scholarships. They will be presented with their awards as invited guests to the 233rd National Meeting of ACS, March 25-29, in Chicago.

Chemical informatics is the application of computer technology to chemistry in all of its forms, particularly in the pharmaceutical-manufacturing industry.

Huijun Wang

Huijun Wang

Wang is part of a research group that gathers, researches and analyzes the data of chemical compounds that potentially could be used as anti-cancer agents in human tumor cell lines.

Dong, who also received a CINF-IO Informatics Inc. scholarship at last year's ACS annual meeting, joins a team pioneering the use of Web service and intelligent-based systems for possible use by pharmaceutical companies. These tools enable scientists to more rapidly gather the information needed to make decisions about which chemical compounds are most likely to be safe and effective drugs.

Xiao Dong

Xiao Dong

The two doctoral students conduct their research under the direction of David Wild, assistant professor of informatics.

In 2002 Elsevier MDL and the School of Informatics established the Elsevier MDL Excellence in Informatics Fellowship, which provides funding support to deserving incoming or second-year graduate students pursuing degrees in chemical informatics or bioinformatics.

The American Chemical Society supports scientific inquiry in the field of chemistry. The organization has more than 160,000 members at all degree-levels and in all fields of chemistry, chemical engineering and related fields.

More information about chemical informatics programs at the IU School of Informatics is at: www.informatics.indiana.edu/academics/chem.asp.